The Oriental Department and the East Asia Department jointly manage the Oriental and East Asia Reading Room.

It is principally aimed at serving specialist users.

The reference collection in the reading room contains approximately 34,000 volumes, primarily general and specialist bibliographies, reference and standard works on states, people, cultures, languages and literatures of Asia and Africa. The holdings are arranged systematically and descriptions can be accessed via StabiKat.

Access to our manuscripts and other special materials at the Oriental / East Asia Reading Room is possible Monday to Friday from 9am to 3pm only. For access, please register early, but at least one working day in advance: orient@sbb.spk-berlin.de

For more details on our registration process, please see here.

Please note

Starting July 1, 2026, preparations will begin for the relocation of the special collections of the Department of Oriental Studies and the Department of East Asian Studies as part of the upcoming comprehensive renovation of the building on Potsdamer Straße.

As a result, access to Oriental and Asian manuscripts and other special materials in our collection will not be available until approximately the end of September 2026. We regret that other services, such as reproduction requests, will also not be available during this period.

We ask our users for their understanding regarding these unavoidable restrictions.

We will inform you in a timely manner on our website about when access will resume—expected to be in October 2026.